Bad luck and crashes during the opening two stages have forced BikeExchange-Jayco to reevaluate their goals at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. The Australian outfit are all but out of the general classification after Kristen Faulkner and Amanda Spratt crashed for the second day in a row into Provins.
Spratt bore the brunt of the crashes among the team on stage 2 going down on the windswept roads. BikeExchange-Jayco confirmed in a medical update that she has no fractures but that she will decide on Wednesday morning if she will start stage 3.
“Amanda was involved in today’s crash at Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She managed to finish the race, but as she passed the finish line she was in big pain at her right ribs, right knee and wrist,” said Damien Bertrand, Team Doctor.
“We decided to go to the hospital to take x-ray and CT scan and luckily nothing is broken. For this reason we will evaluate tomorrow morning her situation in order to understand if she will be fit to race.”
Faulkner, who came into the race as the GC leader, also crashed for the second day in a row. After coming over the line in Provins 3:48 down, and with bloody wounds on her leg, Faulkner is now 4:04 back and in 92 place on the overall.
Cyclingnews spoke with the Alex Manly at the finish of stage 2 and she gave some insight into what happened in the crashes that brought down Spratt and Faulkner.
“We got caught up in a few little crashes today and so we were quite spread out. We ended up with Kristen [Faulkner] and Urška [Žigart] trying to bring her back but there was another crash in the convoy,” she said
“We lost a bit of time and there are some stages to come that we can do a good job in. There are still some things that we can fight for and I’m sure we’ll bounce back good.”
Manly noted that while the overall classification is out of reach for the mountain stages near the end of the race, Ruby Roseman-Gannon is sitting only 50 seconds back from overall leader Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma) and has a chance to move up during the puncheur stages ahead.
“Ruby still has good time. I don’t know what the team plan will be and we just have to reassess.”
Manly is optimistic that BikeExchange-Jayco can still pull together a good result during the final six stages.
“We have a little bit of bad luck. I’m not shaken by that but today was a bit worse for us. We still have six days to go, so it’s all good,” she said.
